GOP Lawmakers Issue Ultimatum to Demand Changes to Trump's 'Big, Beautiful Bill' or Face Rejection: 'All Three of Us Have to Be Yes'

Int'l Business Times

4 hours ago

A trio of Senate conservatives is threatening to derail President Donald Trump's sweeping legislative spending package unless GOP leaders agree to steep spending cuts and rollbacks of green energy subsidies and Medicaid.
Senators Ron Johnson (R-WI), Rick Scott (R-FL) and Mike Lee (R-UT) are demanding significant changes to the Senate version of what Trump has dubbed his "big, beautiful bill," warning that they will vote as a bloc against the measure if their conditions are not met.
"There's no way I vote for this thing next week," Johnson told reporters, citing concerns that the bill would add to the deficit rather than reduce it, The Hill reported. "All three of us have to be yes or none of us are yes."
The legislation, which Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) hopes to bring to the floor next week, has already drawn opposition from moderates including Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) over proposed cuts to Medicaid. But conservatives now pose an equally serious obstacle, calling for deeper cuts and a faster repeal of renewable energy tax credits passed under the Biden administration.
Scott is pushing for dramatic changes to the federal Medicaid funding formula, including a rollback of the enhanced match rate for states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.
"The focus should be on: How do we take care of what Medicaid's original purpose was? It's children and the chronically ill," he argued, adding that half of adults covered by Medicaid expansion are not working and are not disabled.
Senate moderates like Hawley, Murkowski and Susan Collins (R-ME) have raised alarms about the impact of Medicaid cuts on rural hospitals, while hardliners insist the deficit must be addressed urgently.
Lee, meanwhile, wants a more aggressive phaseout of green energy subsidies. "Green New Deal subsidies that don't terminate by 2028 will effectively become permanent," he warned followers on X. Murkowski and other senators warn sudden withdrawal of clean energy subsidies would cost jobs and waste billions of already invested dollars.
The internal standoff comes amid a new Congressional Budget Office projection that the House-passed version of Trump's agenda would add $3.4 trillion to the national debt. While Johnson acknowledged historic spending cuts in the legislation, he cautioned that the cuts are outweighed by new spending provisions.
Despite efforts by Thune to bridge divides within the caucus, the fate of the bill remains uncertain.
"The deficit will eat us alive if we don't get it under control," Lee posted on X. "If not us, who? If not now, when?"
Originally published on Latin Times